


None of these will bring disaster

by Petra



Category: White Collar
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-23
Updated: 2010-03-23
Packaged: 2017-10-08 06:24:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/73645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petra/pseuds/Petra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neal found out where Kate is and he's going after her, but she's not exactly in what you might consider "our reality."</p>
            </blockquote>





	None of these will bring disaster

**Author's Note:**

> For [](http://giglet.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**giglet**](http://giglet.dreamwidth.org/), who proposed the conceit. Thanks to [](http://sage.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**sage**](http://sage.dreamwidth.org/) for beta-reading.

The doorbell rang, then rang again as Satchmo started barking. Peter looked at the clock--11:55PM--and at El, who was as confused as he was. "Neal?" she asked.

"He would've just broken in." Peter checked his phone, which had no messages or missed calls, and grabbed a set of sweats as the doorbell rang again. The barking intensified until it more or less matched Peter's heart rate. "Oh, for god's sake, Satch, it's all right. Probably." He went down the stairs as quickly as he dared in sock feet and looked out the front door window, then groaned and unlocked it, getting one hand on Satchmo's collar.

"This wasn't my idea," Havisham protested immediately, his hands up where Peter could see them. His overcoat might have held a multitude of weaponry and tools. "I would never have said, 'Why yes, I would love to visit the Suit residence in the dead of night,' but--"

Peter sighed. "What did he do now?" Satchmo whined, and Peter let him go.

"Well." Havisham took a deep breath and looked at his watch. "He hasn't done anything yet, but in three minutes he's going to do something phenomenally stupid. Though not technically illegal, I don't think."

None of this was helping Peter's adrenalin. He grabbed his jacket and checked the pockets for his wallet, badge, and keys. "What's going on and how do we stop it?"

Havisham was still between him and the door. "You're not going to get there in time."

Peter hit the speed dial on his phone for Neal's number. "Explain," he said, and the voicemail system picked up on the first ring. He hung up the call.

"He found out where Kate is."

"And he's going after her." Peter shook his head. "Neat trick, since even the Bureau doesn't know where she is, just how to get in touch with her."

Havisham cleared his throat. "About that. Do you have any suspicions? Based on the contact mechanism, I mean?"

Peter rolled his eyes and told himself firmly that if he strangled Havisham, he would have no easy way to figure out what was going on with Neal, and would have to do all the work himself. Again. "The whole thing with phases of the moon? It's not the most elaborate code I've seen for a drop."

"No." Havisham looked at his watch again. "But it's important, you see, because she's not exactly in what you might consider 'our reality.'" He made quote marks in the air with his fingers.

Peter rubbed his eyes and unclenched his left hand deliberately, finger by finger. "How many different hallucinogenic substances are in your bloodstream right now?"

"None!" Havisham held his hands up again as if that was going to prove he wasn't on acid. "Look, Agent, I'm not making any of this up. And in--" one more look at his watch "--thirty seconds, Neal's tracker is going to disappear off the face of the earth."

"He's going to cut it." Peter groaned. "Where is Kate really?"

"Are you even listening to me? I knew I should've brought some kind of alcohol as a hostess-gift and general sedative. Ten seconds, and Neal won't even be in New York anymore."

"He can't get to an airport inside that radius." Peter scowled. "There's nowhere he can go without triggering something. What's the con here?"

Havisham waved this aside. "There's no con. It's about Kate, I told you, and all right, so maybe that sounds like it could be a con, but it's not. Neal doesn't need an airplane to get to--"

Peter's phone vibrated. The caller ID was the US Marshals. He picked up and said, "Agent Burke."

A man's voice, clipped and efficient, said, "Tracker number 9305A is malfunctioning, though there is no sign that it's been cut."

Havisham gave Peter a look that said "I told you so." Peter frowned at him. "What's its last known location?"

There was a momentary pause. "Belvedere Castle, in Central Park."

"At midnight?" Peter sighed. "Maybe someone mugged Caffrey. Keep me posted if anything else happens."

"Of course, sir." The tracking center cut the connection.

"Belvedere Castle?" Peter asked Havisham.

Havisham shook his head. "He's not there anymore. He's in--I suppose the best way to think of it is the fairy realm."

"Oh, no," El said from the stairs. She was clutching her bathrobe around herself and frowning down at them. "Why'd you let him do something that stupid?"

Peter looked from El to Havisham and said, "About that drink."

For the duration of two glasses of whiskey--El moved the bottle to her end of the dining room table when Peter would have had a third--Havisham told a story about how Kate had sold what amounted to her soul to otherworldly creatures who might or might not have anything to do with elves, goblins, or Tinkerbell. El took the whole thing at face value. She asked more pertinent questions than Peter would've been able to think of stone cold sober.

"And that's why the tracker's not on the map," Havisham said at the end of his tale.

"Okay, if you're telling the truth--"

"I am," Havisham protested.

"He is," El said, and that was what made Peter shudder. He could disbelieve Havisham if the man said the sky was blue, but El wasn't the kind of woman who had unicorn posters and believed that there were angels everywhere.

"Well. If you're telling the truth, and I'm not saying you're not except I don't want to believe you, Kate stole something that belonged to the Queen. The fairy Queen. So she can't come back to--to reality, and that's one of those permanent forever and ever fairy tale things. And you figured this out and told Neal, so Neal went after her. And the second he runs out of beef jerky and bottled water they're going to own his soul?"

Havisham wrinkled his nose. "In essence, yes."

Peter leaned back in the dining room chair and sighed. "What do we have that Neal doesn't? I mean, if someone went after him, what would stop them from getting in the same mess he probably is?"

"You're not going to be trying to save Kate," El said. Peter winced at the switch from "someone" to "you" and she gave him the same smile she always did when Neal was in trouble. "According to the rules as far as we know them, Kate's stuck now. But unless Neal has done something foolish, he should be allowed to leave relatively unscathed."

"I told him what the known risks were." Havisham folded his arms.

"Of course you did, Moz." El gave him an encouraging nod. "But he could make a mistake."

"Or he might not've been listening." Peter turned his empty glass between his hands and tried not to imagine Neal's attempts to bluff his way through Fairyland on the strength of a smile and a good suit. "The second you say 'Kate,' it's like his brain turns off. I hate the thought of leaving her stranded there forever either, even if she did something wrong, but--there's such a thing as cutting your losses." He felt like he was wandering into a hostage situation half-blind in another country. Worse than that, he was a little relieved at the thought of having Kate out of the way, and even though he hated that he felt that way, it was still true. Maybe it would mean Neal would finally get over her--but it was too soon to think about that, not while he was still in danger.

El put her hand on Peter's wrist. "So you'd have the advantages of having your wits about you and a goal that you might be able to achieve. And--well. I'm not an expert on this kind of thing--"

Peter laughed once and laced their fingers together. "I would've noticed if you had a big crystal collection and gnomes in the yard, honey."

"That's not actually a requirement for dabbling in the occult," Havisham said. "My aunt makes half her money as a Tarot reader and she collects Dresden shepherdesses."

"If one ever goes missing, I'll know where to look," Peter warned him.

"Not now," El said. "My grandfather disappeared when my mother was a year old, and my grandmother always said he was taken by the Shining Ones."

Peter blinked. "Is that one of their aliases?"

Havisham snorted. "It's like not speaking of the devil, or calling Voldemort He Who Must Not Be Named. You don't want to get their attention, so you don't call them by their real name."

El squeezed Peter's hand before he had a chance to ask who Voldemort was. "She had a protection chant she said over everyone in the family whenever she saw us. My parents thought it was one of those harmless, ridiculous things, but she was perfectly lucid the rest of the time, and she had some compelling reasons for thinking that my grandfather hadn't just run away."

"Like what?" Peter asked.

"He disappeared during a half moon, he never had enough money then to make it very far away if he'd wanted to go, not during the Depression, and that same night he told my grandmother he loved her more than anything." El shrugged. "And there was the poetry he wrote, but that all disappeared with him except for the pieces my grandmother memorized. It was beautiful, and all about the Shining Ones."

"Poetry isn't circumstantial evidence, El." Peter shook his head. "And I guess your grandmother's charm worked because, hey, none of you were ever stolen away in the night, right?"

El bit her lip. "There was my mother's cousin Stephen, actually. He told Grandmama to skip the rhyme, once, when he was fifteen and thought he knew everything. He disappeared two weeks later."

Havisham reached over and patted her hand before Peter had recovered enough to react. "I'm sorry, El."

"Really disappeared? Like, didn't leave a note or anything?" Peter frowned. "Kids that age run away from home all the time."

El shook her head. "You can check if you want to. There was an investigation when it happened, but no one's heard from him since."

Peter nodded, still trying to wrap his mind around a world where his in-laws were protected from evil elves and wicked fairy godmothers by a rhyme. "That's terrible."

"It was." El sat up straighter and Peter recognized her posture as meaning she was ready to put plans in motion. "But at least I can give you whatever protection the spell's good for now."

Havisham cleared his throat. "That, and I gathered a few odds and ends for Neal before he went off."

"A horseshoe here, a four-leaf clover there? Eye of newt?" Peter asked.

"Oh, I hadn't thought of that. Thank you so much for your suggestions," Havisham said dryly. "Or if you actually want to get home again, maybe you could accept that in this instance, I'm more of an expert than you are."

El gave Peter a pleading look, but he ignored it and said, "Or this could all be some huge Candid Camera setup. You found some way to block the tracking anklet, and now you're going to send me off with warpaint and quartz crystals the size of my head in the middle of the damned park, and when the cops find me wandering around there goes my career. I can see the headline: FBI Finds Fairies, Fugitive Flees." The F's came out a little wetter than they should have. Perhaps the hour, the booze, and the general ridiculousness of the situation were getting to him a touch.

"I can leave," Havisham offered. "And you can pretend that whatever's going on has a perfectly rational, not-even-slightly-magical explanation. But Neal and Kate will still be in Fairy."

"Don't go anywhere," El said, and that voice was enough to get Peter's attention. She'd used it to schedule their third date, when he didn't know if he had anything to offer her; she'd used it on everyone who'd been involved in the wedding; she'd used it on him enough to know he was going to do exactly what she told him. "We're going to get this all worked out."

"Right." Peter leaned over backward, hunting for a legal pad on the shelf, and nearly fell over. "Tell me what to do, and I'll do it. Or--hell, you could come with me."

Havisham sucked on his teeth once. "It'd be better not to send in the cavalry if we don't have to. If El's here--and safe--and she's got some kind of protection charm, you'd be better off with her relatively out of their reach."

Peter tried to remember the last time he'd gone into something without any hope of backup, then steeled his nerves and wrote "Disneyworld" at the top of the page. "What's first?"

"You're not going to Disneyworld," Havisham said, sounding tired.

Peter smiled at him. "The Shining Ones, Disneyworld. Same principle, right?"

"Right. Except--" Havisham took the pen and wrote "Faerie" in neat, small letters "--you should know the right name of where you're going and how they spell it. Just in case you need to find it on a map."

"They have maps?"

"No. Let's start with the charm," El said.

*

Afterward, Peter remembered the trip as a cross between the longest bender he'd ever been on, a forced march through a forest the size of Long Island, and a trip to a debating society where everyone else smiled, wore swords and Spock ears, and cheated like Enron accountants. There was a banquet to welcome him when he found the fairy--or Faerie--court, somewhere that had no geographic relationship to anywhere he could imagine.

Being introduced--or was it presented--to the Queen was like a nightmare. She looked exactly like Elizabeth except for her ears and her crown. The only thing that kept Peter from thinking he was losing his mind was that when she gave him her hand to kiss, she smelled like metal, not like a human.

There was no assigned seating, so he snagged a chair next to Neal, who barely seemed to know he was there. Neal looked like he was coming down with the flu and spent all his time staring at a girl who might've been Kate with stick-on ears and acting like someone had stolen his will to live. The food looked beautiful, but thanks to El and Havisham, Peter knew to smile, say "Thank you," and pull out a bottle of Gatorade without touching anything on the table.

"Are you not hungry after your voyage?" the Queen asked from behind Peter. He turned in his chair so quickly he almost fell, wanting to see her again and prove to himself that she wasn't El.

Peter ran his thumb over his wedding ring and looked at Neal, who glanced at the Queen and shook his head once. "I'm fine, thank you, Your Majesty."

The Queen sighed, a sound that Peter associated with nothing so much as "You left the seat up again." "So many travelers who want nothing more than to purloin away that which has come to us of its own free will." She put her hand on Neal's shoulder and leaned down to kiss his cheek. Every gesture she made was like dancing. "Some of them will never find what they think they seek."

Neal scowled at her, his normal charm more absent than it was first thing in the morning or in the middle of the night. Peter wondered if that was some strange magic, sheer exhaustion, or the fact that next to the Queen, no one showed in a good light. "If you would just let her go--"

The Queen's laugh was not El's; El never sounded so triumphant and horrible. "If I let her go, she would not leave with you, no matter how you pled your case. She belongs to Faerie now."

If Kate couldn't or wouldn't leave, but it was still worth talking about--"Can we leave, then?" Peter asked.

"So soon?" The Queen's sad smile tugged at him, but not because he cared about disappointing her. "You have not even touched your meal. There are all manner of delights here, if you will only let yourself see them." She put her hand on Neal's chin and turned his face toward her, then kissed him.

The twin sensations of arousal and nausea made Peter's head spin, and he closed his eyes to block out the image that was too right and too wrong all at once. He put his hand in his pocket and touched his useless badge, letting it remind him who he was and what the hell he was doing. "The sooner we hit the road, the better, Your Majesty."

She brushed his cheek with her cold fingers and sighed. "If you must go, you must--but first you will pay for your safe passage."

"How?" Peter asked, frowning at her and at Neal, who had folded his arms and sat staring at the table like a scolded child.

The Queen smiled. "Let us negotiate."

They woke up in the Shakespeare Garden in the gray light of a Manhattan dawn, holding hands and getting a skeptical look from a friendly neighborhood cop. "You boys got a home to go to?" he asked, and prodded Neal's worn, once-beautiful shoe with his foot.

They were home, and probably safe, which meant that it was finally all right to let go of Neal for a moment. The impossibly long walk to where they had begun had been fraught with all kinds of danger, and the Queen had told them in one of those Faerie bargains that they had to hang onto each other until they arrived. "Yes, officer. Sorry. It's a long story." He stood up and brushed himself off, trying not to look at Neal doing the same. "It won't happen again."

"They have places you can get a bed for the night, you know," said the cop.

Peter patted his pockets and found his badge, but decided for the good of the agency not to bring it out. "I--we know. Really. It was an experiment."

Neal smiled at the cop, using his best innocent expression. "Have a good morning, officer."

The cop shook his head. "Least it wasn't indecent exposure," he said, and walked off.

Neal ran his hand through his hair and removed several dead leaves. "Did I say thank you? Because--thank you."

Peter rubbed his eyes. "You're welcome. Do I even have to say 'Don't do this again'?"

"No. No, of course not. That was just about the stupidest thing I've ever done, and no, I won't try it again." Neal ducked his head and smiled at him. There was a strange tug in Peter's chest. It was no worse than the ache in his legs or the twinges in his back that made him feel much older than he was, and his left arm wasn't numb, so he decided to ignore it in favor of more pressing problems.

"I don't know about you, but I could use a shower and a change of clothes." Peter brushed at his pants. "And a day or so worth of sleep, but I bet they could use us in the office. We could go after lunch."

"Sure," Neal said. "And--thanks."

Peter nodded. "Let me walk you home." They'd come so far together through places that didn't exist that it felt strange to walk through a stand of trees and not wonder what was going to leap out at him, or what esoteric promises Neal might've made to whomever or whatever it was.

They didn't talk until they reached June's door, where the maid called upstairs immediately and June came down in a bathrobe and slippers. She hugged Neal, then Peter, Central Park dirt, Faerie leaves, and all. "You're all right! Mozzie said you were--" she looked toward the maid "--in a difficult place."

"We're fine," Neal said. "Thanks to Peter."

Peter thought of how long they could've been away--Rip van Winkle was a less than reassuring story, but June didn't seem to have aged--and said, "Good to see you, too. May I borrow your phone?"

"Of course, of course." June glanced at the maid, who brought a cordless.

"Hello?" El said.

Peter leaned into the phone as if that would make them be closer together. "We're home safe. Neal and I, that is--Kate's--not."

"It's so good to hear your voice--and you got him back, at least. Poor Kate." El sighed. "I called you in sick for the last two days, and said Neal was here with the tracking thing, but you were both contagious so it was a bad time to get it fixed."

"You're brilliant," Peter said.

She laughed. "I missed you, too. Are you coming home or going to the office?"

The thought of facing the chrome and glass reality of the office made Peter's eyes hurt. "I think whatever that horrible illness is, we've still got it for one more day."

"Your voice has been acting up," she told him, "so I'll make the call again."

"Thank you." Peter glanced around the foyer; Neal had gone upstairs and June was wherever she normally spent her mornings. "I love you. See you soon."

"Bring Neal," El said in the voice that brooked no argument. "He could probably use a little home-cooked food."

"I will," Peter promised, and hung up.

The next call he made was to the US Marshals, who gave him a stammered explanation for how a tracker might possibly have gone off the grid for two days, then come back online close to where it had gone off. He assured them that Neal Caffrey was in his custody and had been for the duration, and that was enough for everyone concerned for the moment.

Neal came downstairs a few minutes later, freshly washed and shaved in a clean set of clothing that made Peter feel even more as though he'd gone camping for a month. "You're just doing that to show me up," Peter said. "Elizabeth said you'd better come and visit."

"When?" Neal asked. Without the grime of their long walk and in a suit that would have fitted him perfectly a week before, he looked like he'd lost fifteen pounds he hadn't had to spare and spent a week on a caffeine jag.

Peter was half-tempted to tell him to sleep it off first, but El probably had plans that went beyond a good meal. "As soon as we can get there."

Neal covered a yawn with his hand. "I think I can sleep through just about any cabbie in the city, but for Elizabeth--let's go."

True to his word, Neal fell asleep as soon as the cab had pulled away from the curb, and stayed that way through the cabbie shouting at the talk radio. When they got to the house, El and Havisham were sitting at the dining room table with coffee and juice between them and enough pancakes, eggs, and bacon to feed an army.

El got up and hugged Peter, Satchmo nosing at his legs as if he'd been away for months. "I'm so glad to see you."

He buried his face in her hair and looked at the tip of her ear while he had the chance. No matter what the Queen had looked like or what she could have promised him, simply human Elizabeth was the most beautiful woman he could imagine. "You too, El. You, too."

She hugged Neal next. "Don't you ever do anything like that again."

"I won't," he promised. Then he made a show of taking a deep breath. "It smells like food I'm allowed to eat in here."

"Of course." El waved them both over to the table. "Let me know if there's anything else you want."

Peter smiled at her. "This looks like a little piece of heaven."

There was an interval of intense eating. When it had died down somewhat, Havisham said, "One of the things I warned you about was the sacrifice that's expected before they let you leave."

Neal nodded. "They didn't give me much of a choice, so it's a good thing I have a steady job." He picked up a pen and pulled a paper napkin toward himself, then drew a smiley face.

The eyes were misaligned, the circle was so far off round as to be an ellipse, and the mouth was off-kilter.

"You could pass it off as a Picasso," Peter said, and everyone else at the table glared at him. The penny dropped. "Oh--oh. That's the best you can do?"

Neal put his head in his hands. "I might be able to learn again, but--yeah. I don't think I could even color by number."

El put her arm around Neal. "It'll be okay. We're not going to let this hurt you."

Peter turned the legal pad toward himself and frowned at the skewed smiley. "Not more than it already has, anyway."

"Thanks," Neal said, sounding wet and muffled. "And--" he made a snuffling noise, then looked up with his best false smile. "It could be worse. I could be stuck there."

Havisham shook his head. "That would be worse, definitely." He looked at Peter. "Have you forgotten how to do Fed tricks?"

Peter thought about this but couldn't find any obvious gaps in his memory, apart from the blur of having given up something that was important, something important enough to protect and lie for. "I can't be sure until I try, but I don't think so."

El studied Peter for a moment. "You don't seem different."

"Missing digits are an old classic," Havisham suggested.

Peter held up his intact fingers. "Not this time."

"There must be something," El said, and rested her chin on her hand.

Peter shook his head. The knowledge was somewhere in the tangled memories of the trip, but he couldn't bring it to mind. "It's like it's on the tip of my tongue, but I can't think of it."

"I'm sure you'll figure it out. Let me know when you do; I know a few experts who'll be fascinated to hear about it." Havisham stood up.

Neal pushed his chair back. "I can--"

"Don't," El said, standing before he could. "I should've done what I could to protect you earlier, but I didn't think you'd believe in any of it."

"I probably wouldn't have." Neal flipped the pen he couldn't draw with over the backs of his fingers. "But what can you do?"

The real question he was asking was, "Can you make any of this better?" but Peter couldn't imagine how El's chant, however helpful it was or wasn't as protection, was going to fix things after the fact.

"I'd better see myself out," Havisham said, and left.

"There's this spell," El said, and Neal shook his head, looking at her with wide, amused eyes.

"Of course there is. How does it go?"

Casting the spell and making it stick involved some long conversation, during which Peter fell asleep on the couch with Satchmo's head on his lap.

Someone woke him with a kiss, and once he was awake enough to know that, he knew it wasn't El and turned his face away. "Don't."

Neal was sitting next to him on the couch, one hand lightly on his shoulder. "Really? You followed me all the way to Faerie for--what, then?"

"That isn't--you're my partner. And my responsibility. I have to keep you safe." Peter could almost hear the words before he said them, as if he'd said them before.

The memory came back to him: he'd said the same thing to the Queen of Faerie, but that time, he'd known he wasn't telling the whole truth.

She had changed him so that he was.

Neal frowned at him. "You haven't done anything but keep me safe. I thought--" he shook his head "--I thought, and El thinks, you wanted this."

El cleared her throat. She was sitting in the chair watching them, close enough that Peter wanted to reach out and hide behind her, as if she'd ever let him. She'd teased him about Neal since he was just the Caffrey files, and she hadn't been imagining things. "Did something change?" she asked Peter.

Peter closed his eyes and wished that one of them had confided his embarrassing crush to Neal months ago. "I took a walk on the wild side, or the other side, or whatever you want to call it." He rubbed his hand across his mouth and tried to smile, because whatever else had happened, there was a budding friendship on the line and a partnership he didn't want to lose. "And I--I don't want any of that anymore. But I can still draw."

"Oh, god," El said softly.

Neal winced faintly, just around his eyes. It was the kind of tell most people would miss, even if they knew to look for it. "And I--" he waved his hand between them, indicating some tangle of emotions Peter was just as glad he couldn't feel anymore. It had to hurt like hell. "Damn. Want to trade?"

Peter leaned back and folded his arms. "Then what? You can go back to prison for some gorgeous artwork you conveniently forget to sign with your own name and I'm stuck--missing you?" It was too hard to say "wanting you." He had, and remembering how much made him wince, but it was over. "I think we're better off."

"Maybe." Neal took a deep breath, then covered up his exhaustion with a moment's blankness, then something like a smile. "Too late to worry about it now." He still looked worn, but some of the hopelessness he'd had in Faerie was fading. Peter wanted to comfort him somehow and make the rest of it go away, but he couldn't think of anything that might work without making promises he wasn't sure he could keep yet.


End file.
